| Americans, Their Taxes and Transportation Funding Ryan Avent submits: Elana Schor reports on efforts to fund the next transportation bill and notes that the latest craze is a move to tax oil futures and (perhaps) all stock transactions. This strategy is gaining ground because oil markets and traders are very unpopular and (still worse) geographically concentrated, whereas users of transportation infrastructure tend to enjoy the support of most Americans and are spread across many Congressional districts. There’s no reason that a transport funding mechanism has to involve transportation. Money is fungible, and to a certain extent we should simply be focused on raising revenues in the places where it’s least costly to do so and spending revenue where it does the most good. And certainly there are some economists out there arguing that a financial transactions tax would prevent some negative market behavior while raising revenue (although they tend to argue that the revenue should then be used to capitalize insurance funds or cover other bail-out costs).Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
GM's Hummer Deal Failure: The Broader Impact of Tighter Chinese Lending Standards Robert Salomon submits: For those of you following GM (MTLQQ.PK) developments, it appears that the sale of Saab to Spyker has now closed (see Spyker Closes Purchase of Saab).Spyker Cars of the Netherlands closed a deal to buy Saab from General Motors for cash and shares worth $400m, saving the Swedish car brand from closure and ending a sale that has dragged on for more than a year.Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Textron Inc. Q1 2010 Earnings Call Transcript Textron Inc. (TXT)Q1 2010 Earnings CallApril 22, 2010 09:00 a.m. ETComplete Story » seekingalpha.com |
VOLKSWAGEN AG ORD H1 2010 (January-June) Earnings Call Transcript VOLKSWAGEN AG ORD (VLKAF.PK)H1 2010 (January-June) Earnings CallJuly 29, 2010 2:00 pm ETComplete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Trucking Firms Have Value in Tow Morningstar submits: After falling off a cliff in 2009, truck tonnage still remains below healthy historical levels and freight rates still have room to recover. When the soft U.S. economy caused freight hauling demand to drop in late 2008, the industry's excess capacity compounded the damaging effect of lower volume, since truckers bid down rates to try to keep their heavy iron running. Near-term volume trends are still uncertain, even though demand has recovered off its 2009 nadir. We believe pricing is also poised for recovery, but the timing of material rate improvement is also uncertain. That said, in mid-October, Landstar (LSTR) reported its third-quarter revenue per truck improved 14% year over year, and we're encouraged to see general rate increases announced at several large less-than-truckload carriers. We think this bodes well for a better 2011. Market Volume Trends Up Year over Year, but Lately Sliding Sideways SequentiallyComplete Story » seekingalpha.com |